Research

Farm Bill Politics - OLD

The largest and most successful farm businesses collect the lion’s share of farm subsidies because farm lobbyists dominate the development of farm policies. As a result, farm policies do little to support family farmers and the environment and too much to protect the income of agribusiness. More than half of farm subsidies flow to Congressional districts represented on the House Agriculture Committee.

Congressman Fincher: Stop stealing our money. Over the weekend, the 2nd most heavily subsidized farmer in Congress – and one of the largest subsidy recipients in Tennessee history– said Washington should not “steal” from taxpayers to support food assistance like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – better known as food stamps.Read More

The New York Times has used data from EWG’s farm subsidy database to shed more light on Rep. Stephen Fincher’s (R-Tenn.) hypocritical defense of the $20 billion cuts to SNAP in the House farm bill. Read More

Common-sense amendments to place reasonable limits on how much premium subsidy a farm operator can receive will strengthen the program while still providing farmers with a generous safety net. Read More

The budget-busting farm bill approved Wednesday night by the House Agriculture Committee and its leaders – Reps. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) and Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) – is nothing but bad news for the environment. Read More

Two out of every five farmers who seek federal help in reducing water pollution from their fields or the amount of pesticides and antibiotics they use are being turned away because U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service lacks sufficient funding. Read More

Roughly a third of all farmers receive direct subsidies from the government, according to USDA. Even more get federal support to buy crop insurance. So are farmers among those “dependent” Americans? And can President Obama really depend upon their support? Read More

Environmental Working Group’s latest update of the EWG farm subsidy database shows that 23 members of Congress, or their family members, benefitted from $6,140,634 in taxpayer-funded farm subsidy payments between 1995 and 2011. Read More

Even as extreme drought wreaks havoc on crops and communities across the Midwest, government officials are now confident that they can link recent bouts of extreme weather to man-made climate change. Read More